The following contribution follows a strict train of thoughts which refers to a selection of both academic texts and to works of fiction. At the beginning of human history, comparatively few people were living on earth and they did not do much damage to its natural resources. In the course of time, however, overpopulation was reached, and after the Industrial Revolution which started in the 1850s, a basic change of human life took place, which meant an overuse or even an exploitation of natural resources. This resulted in too many carbon emissions and led to a global warming of our planet, which had many serious consequences, e.g. weather extremes such as more violent hurricanes, long periods of drought, melting of the pole icecaps, rise of the sea levels, expansion of deserts … The natural result was a change of the global climate which has now become a climate crisis, that is, ultimately, the question of human survival is at stake. At this stage of development, fiction gains a most crucial important role: it offers creative writers the opportunity of developing a modified or even a new concept of Nature and of future visions of human destiny. The problem is: will there occur the extinction of mankind on earth? Or is there any hope left for human survival? Experience has shown that the imagination of writers possesses both miraculous and unlimited possibilities.

Overpopulation and Climate Change Willi Real

These figures which refer to the past, do not leave much space for interpretation. However, predictions concerning the future will be controversial. All of the following sources are endeavors to deal with possible future overpopulation, which will also be closely intertwined and deal with the question whether, in a damaged world of global overheating, a climate crisis may still be possibly averted. In 2021, one scholar starts from the assumption that in the near future there will be about 9,5 -10 billion men living on this planet (2). Another expert, in a comprehensive work first published in 1998, assumes that 12 billion human beings will be living on earth as early as in 2019 (3).

A projection first published by the UNO in 2014 and revised in 2019, assumes that the increase of the world's population will stop at the end of the 21st century and that by that time there will be living about 10,9 billions of men on earth. Besides, one should realize that up to now, the global population growth rate has already considerably diminished, as couples all over the world have fewer children and more and more of their children get a good education. Of course, there are many differences concerning different countries, and the greatest differences of projections concern Africa (4).

Thus concerning population growth in the past there exist different notions. The UNO projection seems to be the most sensible and the most moderate one. Even if this prognosis comes true, the problem of overpopulation, as will be shown below, will be serious enough. However, this analysis will be preceded by some remarks on its origin and historical comments on it.

The Problem of Overpopulation

About 135 years later, Robert Malthus was quoted by Aldous Huxley in his long-time classic Brave New World (1932; chapter 3) where the writer focuses on the so-called “Malthusian belt” (6). This device is said to be used as a tool of population control, which, at the same time, has also become a symbol of contraception. Besides, it is a well-known fact that in Brave New World, babies are being bred and born in bottles as it is described down to many a detail in the first chapter of the novel. Theoretically, there exist two possibilities to deal with the world's overpopulation. Either one may reduce the number of babies being born, or one has to increase the production of food in order to find a solution for a possibly underlying social conflict. In a later well-known collection of essays, Huxley concludes: “Overpopulation leads to economic insecurity and social unrest. Unrest and insecurity lead to more control by central governments and an increase of their power” (7), which, of course, would be disadvantageous for the individuals. This is supplemented by a remark in Aldous Huxley's Ape and Essence which exists both as a fictionalized version and a dramatized account (8). In his work of fiction, as early as 1948, Aldous Huxley declared that “ … modern man continued, generation after generation, to exploit (italics are mine) the earth ...“ (9), which certainly must still be regarded as a warning both premature and justified.

In this work, there is more textual evidence to show that Huxley turned out to be an early ecological critic. According to him, it all started with the Industrial Revolution when people “began to congratulate themselves on being the Conquerors of Nature. Conquerors of Nature, indeed! In actual fact, of course, they had merely upset the equilibrium of Nature and were about to suffer the consequences ...” (10). Of course, this view is ironically tinged (cf. the exclamation mark), since, according to Huxley, people had started to overestimate themselves: they had committed an error the consequences of which were easily visible.

In our time more and more writers fictionalize possible developments in the future. Rather than concentrating on the analysis of numbers, they use their imagination in order to present creative projections of utopian or dystopian societies, which also may often be classified as climate fiction. As might be suspected, the range of such different visions is considerable but they may also help the readers to understand their future lives (11). On the one hand, my focus will lie on critical statements to be traced in novels by David Brin, David Mitchell and Margaret Atwood, but, on the other hand, also some more optimistic works by Marge Piercy, Ernest Callenbach, and Richard Powers will be discussed as well (12). All of them were published in the last fifty years, a few of them even being very recent.

To begin with, Malthus and the problem of overpopulation are mentioned in David Brin's novel Earth, which is supposed to take place in 2038 (p. 95), when mankind is definitely living dangerously close to an abyss, and disaster seems to be looming over the world. In the struggle for environmental protection, the writer introduces a character whose fanatic plan of saving our planet includes the reduction of the humans from 10.3 billion men to roughly 20.000, who have to live the lives of hunters and collectors as they occurred during the stone age (13). The underlying assumption is that mankind has become too large, and in order to survive “Man must cut his numbers" (p. 289). This sounds paradoxical or even schizoid because for the survival of a small human minority nothing less than a genocide has to be committed. “Everything would be fine on Earth if humans just left” (p. 289) Somewhat surprisingly, in the end, mankind gets a second chance: complete disaster is avoided, while ecological consciousness is established.

In his international bestseller The Bone Clocks (14), David Mitchell argues that future life on earth will be determined by a scarcity of resources, by overpopulation, by a loss of biodiversity, and by too high a degree of exploitation: thus his standpoint is very close to an apocalyptic view, too. It goes without saying that such statements are also put forward by many climate activists in our time.
Climate change as a key theme of this novel occurs only in its final chapter set in 2043, where the reader is confronted with the consequences of global warming and of the climate crisis ... The world has undergone a period called the “Endarkenment” (p. 549). This amounts to saying that a future collapse of civilization as a whole is very likely to occur: in large parts of Europe, at least, there is lawlessness now. The last chapter is clearly to be classified as dystopian fiction: it focusses on post-apocalyptic life as it is supposed to take place on an Irish peninsula. There is food shortage (frequent bottleneck situations), even mass famine, lack of coal for heating, lack of medicine (e.g. insulin), and fear of radioactive emissions ... If this portrayal does not imply the entire extinction of mankind, it shows at least that the consequences of the climate crisis are extremely serious.

As to Margret Atwood, first of all her classic dystopia The Handmaid's Tale (1985) may be mentioned. The state depicted by her, which has been subject to a right-wing take-over, is located in the North East of the USA. Similarly to Brin's novel quoted above, there is only a small part of mankind still living. In other words, the number of deaths has increased by far whereas the birth rate is still in free fall. Strictly speaking, rather than overpopulation, the survival of mankind as a whole is at stake since, as a consequence of environmental pollution, a lot of genetic damage has occurred. This situation is at least partly due to nuclear accidents, which becomes obvious by the handmaids' fear of and aversion to the so-called “colonies” where life-expectancy is very low (15). As another consequence, the so-called handmaids mentioned in the title are made use of as last biological resources: they have to function as "fertility machines" for the survival of man. Such is the pervasive fear of human extinction that the over-regulation of sexual activities is seen as the last way-out. These behavioral patterns must also be dictated to some degree by despair as it may be traced in Atwood's more recent novel The Testaments (2019), which is meant to continue her earlier work of fiction The Handmaid's Tale. Here she describes a theocratic society in which a show of virtue and purity is displayed whereas in reality this country is completely corrupt.

In her trilogy The Maddaddam Story (2003-2013), again the writer describes an apocalyptic state of affairs, strictly speaking even a post-apocalyptic one (16): again the annihilation of mankind is well-nigh complete. Many organ transplants have been carried through, both from animals to men and also the other way round, so that eventually an amalgamation of human and animal lives will be the result. In the last scene of Maddaddam, transgenic humans and hybrid pigs successfully fight against two convicts, that is, the “two painballers” who may be regarded as evil personified (p. 452 and p. 454). At present, there are only some hybrid creatures surviving. They were developed in a laboratory by genetic engineering: they represent the so-called Crakers who are affectionate creatures, but in emotional respect they act like children who lack any analytic abilities. Not being interested in protein, like many animals, these genetically changed “semi-men” (cf. Maddaddam, p. 123) eat and digest grass and leaves. And they develop rapidly: their adolescence starts at the age of four, and their life-expectancy is about 30 years only. Whether these may develop into a more sensible group of 'new' creatures who are meant to replace the former human beings living on earth, seems to be very doubtful. The familiar homo sapiens, anyway, has become a being of the past.

But there are also some fictional examples to the contrary, i.e. there are some more optimistic accounts. In them, mankind is not threatened by extermination; instead they are said to live happily in the near or far-off future, that is, that there will be no longer any animosity between Nature and man.
Such an attitude was expressed, for example, in a novel written by Ernest Callenbach, published in 1975 and entitled Ecotopia (17). This comparatively young and sparsely populated state was founded, after a successful war of secession, in the North Western area of the USA, namely in California, Oregon and the federal state of Washington. In this work, the writer pleaded for a population program to reduce the number of births so that they would amount to “slightly some tenths of a percent below the number of deaths” (p. 135). Thus there is almost an equal number of births and deaths, which prevents the state from becoming overpopulated. As a consequence, what the future holds in store for the humans, seems to be much more promising.

In this context, Callenbach has his protagonist plead for the use of "pollution-free sources of energy", namely "solar energy, earth heat, tides, and wind" (p. 216 and p. 219), which is expressed in this way: "Active research also continues on additional ways of harnessing solar, wind and tidal power" (cf. p. 270f). And at a very early stage of his visit, the protagonist William West (who works as a journalist) learns that, in Ecotopia, the principle of recycling plays an important part: "My fellow travelers did without exception dispose of all metal, glass, or paper and plastic refuse in the appropriate bin. That [...] was my first introduction to the rigid practices of recycling and re-use” (p. 19). This conviction is reinforced in the last paragraph of the same page: “We have so much energy from the sun, so much from the wind, so much from decomposing wastes, so much from the waves, so much from the river ...” (p. 19). Such statements do not only show that for the Ecotopians environmental policy is of the utmost significance but they also document both their respect and their love for Nature (p. 106). On the whole, this novel, then, may be thought to be somewhat idealistic. Anyhow, the country is free from any negative effects of overpopulation.

Another novelist who argues in a similar way is represented by Marge Piercy. In her utopian novel Woman on the Edge of Time, which appeared only one year later, that is, in 1976, she combines a realistic description of the present with a state of societal development roughly 150 years later, namely in 2137. In between there lies a period of history which in the novel is practically represented by a gap. However, it is hinted at in the text, that in the meantime the population was considerably reduced as a consequence of a war similar to another world war: it implied very many casualties, thus again outrageously reducing the number of living people on earth. In this society people show their concern for the natural world right from the beginning, since, in their time, fossil fuels are replaced for example by solar energy (p. 61). Their resources are limited, therefore they co-operate, they do not accept waste and they speak highly of the principle of recycling, which is in complete accordance with the possibility of “becoming partners with water, air, birds, fish, trees ...” (p. 117). They train one another in self-control in order to curb aggressiveness and to produce a society without any ecological problems or class contrasts: "Someday the gross repair will be done. The oceans will be balanced, the rivers flow clean, the wetlands and the forests flourish. There'll be no more enemies. No Them and Us“ (p. 322).

These idealistic principles went together very well with the idea of a stable population on earth, i. e. with the balance of births and deaths, which would result in zero population growth. Consequently, there is an equal number of people dying and being born, which is achieved in this novel by the use of a so-called “breeder”, that is, an incubator, which is activated after a person's death only: thus the population remains in complete control. Such an objective is very likely not going to become reality: however, at least the procedure described is a possibility of successful fighting against overpopulation (p. 135 and p. 138).

There is another novel by the same writer, Marge Piercy, entitled He, She and It, which was published 15 years later, that is, in 1991 (18). According to this work, people had gone too far in destroying the earth, so that now our planet was diminishing the number of people (p. 116), i.e. the death rate exceeded the birthrate (p. 348). Even in the so-called Glop, which is the result of an ecological catastrophe and in which people are living under very miserable conditions, they have realized the extent of the problem so that they take counter-measures against the exploitation of the earth. For example they plant trees in former deforested areas (p. 384). Similarly, it is often argued today that planting new trees serves the benefit of society since they bind harmful CO2 emissions. Such reforestation also represents one example of a complete change in attitude, which means social progress in so far as subjugation is replaced by a kind of co-operation between Nature and men. Callenbach and Piercy, then, provide examples of the fact that dystopian novels may be supplemented by more favourable visions of man's future, which are based on population control.

Tentative Results

In the course of time, some point arrived at which there occurred a transition from quantity to quality. Although it is difficult to say when it occurred precisely, it did arrive definitely. In modern scholarship, attention was early drawn to a critical phenomenon, for example by the former Vice President of the United States, Albert Arnold ("Al") Gore. In his classical study entitled An Inconvenient Truth, first published in 2000, he speaks of a “population explosion” referring to all humans living in the world. As a consequence, at some point, the use of natural resources was no longer environmentally acceptable as it took place at a speed which had become much too rapid (19). Therefore a threshold was exceeded by the extent of the damage done to natural resources. That is, the use of Nature became so intense and so pervasive that use turned into abuse. This process was neither brought about by individual failure nor by a group's or a nation's responsibility. Instead, the environmental damage resulted from collective behavior: it was caused by the sheer quantity of men, which implied that what happened to Nature had evil consequences.

One has to realize that now a crucial step and a decisive transition for man's future took place. “Use” is a neutral or descriptive term, whereas “abuse” is meant in a negative and pejorative way: such was the transformation from quantitative to qualitative categories, which implies that in men's future development the question of moral responsibility and moral values (criteria for good and evil) were concerned. And abuse implied exploitation, which means to use things unfairly or in an exaggerated way without compensating these losses. Thus, overproduction (accompanied by overconsumption), overcropping (in agriculture) and also overfishing (in man's fishing grounds) may be categorized as examples of exploitation.

This development shows that human conduct cannot be separated from a system of moral values so that morality is an integral part of man's existence. Ultimately, an evil attitude to Nature is harmful for the interaction of men themselves.

The same problem is still expressed in the modern concept of an ecological footprint, which is meant to measure human demands on natural resources and which refers to the responsibility of individuals or countries or mankind for Nature. This concept is meant to measure human demands on natural resources, generally speaking (20). From this standpoint it may be derived that all of us should try to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in order to act against global warming and to arrive at what may be classified as sustainable consumption. Thus overpopulation, overproduction and exploitation of natural resources are constituent elements of a much larger unit of problems.

The Traditional Resource Extraction and a Modified Concept of Nature

At present, there is little hope only for the survival of mankind. Sometimes the present climate crisis is called a “process of blind self-destruction”, classified as the “greatest threat to humanity”, and men's situation is compared “to a house on flames” (22). One may surmise with good reason that a global disaster seems to be imminent on earth so that mankind's destiny is to be near-catastrophic or even truly catastrophic.

Yet this is only one side of the coin. In order to avoid such a plight, the human attitude toward Nature has to be changed. It should be pointed out, that the present Pope St. Francis, in his first environmental encyclical Laudato Si (2016), pleaded for a completely new interpretation of the biblical passage from the Book of Genesis quoted above. According to his topical view, Nature consists of animals and plants, of animate and inanimate things, and accordingly, man himself is not only a part of God's creation but also responsible for it (23). Obviously, the concept of responsibility is the keyword of this passage: it does not only introduce a moral dimension by drawing attention to human obligations, but it also calls for a fundamental change of attitude, namely for more respect for Nature, and at the same time for more humility on the part of human beings. In the Pope's view, rather than existing as a resource for human beings only, Nature comes into existence as a force in its own right. This goes perfectly together with Richard Powers's declaration in his novel The Overstory (cf. below) that “a forest deserves protection regardless of its value to humans” (p. 321). Such a change constitutes no less than a crucial caesura in the history of Christianity.

This standpoint also obtained strong praise from quite a different angle. It was the famous English writer of Indian descent, namely Amitav Ghosh, who in his recent collection of essays entitled The Nutmeg's Curse, quoted the following lines from Laudato Si: „A true ecological approach always becomes a social approach. It must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment so as to hear the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor“ (24). Thus there is not only a strong correlation between moral and social actions of humans but also a close connection between people in distress and Nature itself. Therefore it is our duty both to take pity on the poor and to show commitment to Nature since both of them send an urgent demand for help (25).

Another vision of the future: Richard Powers's Utopian Novel The Overstory (2018)

At this point it should be brought back to mind that people in Piercy's vision of the future wanted men to be partners of Nature (cf. above): plants or animals for example are personified so that people may talk to them. And the Ecotopians in Callenbach's work take care of Nature as well: in their society, water as well as air are free from pollution. People are not interested in progress made by industrialization; instead, they love and adore trees (p. 127 and p. 129). As wood is the main material used for the building of houses, they often practice reforestation in order to compensate for such a loss (p. 114, p. 123). This standpoint is shared by Richard Powers (p. 109, p. 451).

Powers, however, goes far beyond the positions taken by both Piercy and Callenbach. He presents a modified concept of Nature in an ambitious and most fascinating novel entitled The Overstory, which came out in 2018. In this work, the trees clearly stand in the center of attention so that they may get all the praise they deserve. Their function is no less than help men to a sustainable future (p. 431).

To begin with, in this work the trees, similarly to men, are said to be active (p. 127). It becomes clear at a very early stage that they are independent beings as they are able to communicate both with the sun and the earth. Thus their roots provide them with nutrition: they get food out of the soil, and their green leaves are indispensable for photosynthesis (cf. p. 124). Taken together, though, these two faculties make their existence possible. Powers uses the literary device of personifying the trees, thus endowing their existence with poetic quality: right from the beginning, they are provided with human characteristics. It has belonged to basic biological knowledge for long that the annual rings on the cross section of trees correspond to their number of years (cf. p. 131), i. e. their age, while their identity remains the same (p. 490).

Besides, there are quite many different types, some of them are male such as oaks, whereas others, like linden trees, are female (p. 72). It has been pointed out by Ovid in his Metamorphoses that the famous pair of lovers, namely Philemon and Baucis, have spent many centuries together as oak and linden (p. 117). The Roman poet tells their story in which the couple is the only one to open their door to strangers and who, as a reward, were allowed to live after death as trees (p. 499). This tale, from which the introductory sentence is quoted in the novel several times (p. 394, p. 466, p. 491), may be considered as an example of a transformation of men into trees. Thus according to this writer of classical antiquity, there exists a strong affinity between trees and men, which also shows that the poets' imagination may easily go beyond the level of reality since it is much richer than “the offerings of full-sized life” (p. 114). Thus the metamorphoses may show a possible basic change from men to things.

Dead trees serve as food for other specimen of their kind: deadwood is the best means in order to promote the growth of new forests. As Powers puts it: “Dead logs are far more alive than living ones” (p. 139) and: “A healthy forest must need dead trees” (p. 121). Trees, then, like many other living beings, first of all, aim at the preservation of their kind: in this way they constitute a new kind of reality as their existence is characterized by a social relationship: “But nothing is less isolated or more social than a tree” (p. 115). This statement is confirmed but a few pages later by the activist Patricia Westerford who is “absolutely sure […] that trees are social creatures” (p. 122). It's obvious to her that “motionless things that grow in mass mixed communities must have evolved ways to synchronize with one another” (p. 122). In forests, then, there are no individuals (p. 142; cf. p. 280). Instead all trees are dependent on each other (p. 218), and they develop a strong sense of belonging together, as they link trees into communities (p. 218). In other words: they practice solidarity by living as members of a coherent organism.

It belongs to their abilities, too, that they get aware of danger or disaster: they can sense an invasion still far away (p. 224) and get prepared (p. 125; cf. p. 142). So in order to survive, their talent may be used as an instrument in order to support their neighbors by warning them against possible enemies. In that respect, they act as role models to be imitated. It may be concluded, then, that trees show patterns of social behavior as well as thoughts and feelings. This idea is made use of by an environmental slogan which runs: “CONTROL KILLS, CONNECTION HEALS”: for reasons of emphasis, it is printed in capital letters and occurs in the novel several times (cf. p. 347, p. 359, p. 378 and p. 470; Patricia Westerford is also full of praise for trees: cf. below).

By the way, in The Overstory human communication with animals is hardly ever made mention of, although it may look back on a long tradition already and although the subject of „the rights of animals” is nowadays hotly debated. Consequently the treatment of domestic animals undergoes a gradual improvement. Perhaps the type of animal that has shared men's company the longest and that has been ascribed most human characters, is represented by dogs. It is well known that they may show feelings such as fear, grief, jealousy, joy of playing, etc. Besides, they make themselves useful by fulfilling many jobs, e.g. they help to locate victims of earthquakes or avalanches, to find drugs hidden in luggage, to act as guides for blind persons, or to help doctors to identify certain types of cancer … In such cases rather than being mere instruments or tools, they act as faithful companions and loyal friends of the humans. Such behavior is foreshadowed in Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time when men are said to talk “to cats, dogs, hamsters” (p. 89), and animals are reported to have a body language of their own (p. 91). Such statements are also reminiscent of the time-honored literary genres of the fable and the fairy tale.

Anyway, trees and human beings are said to possess common ancestors (27). In the history of life, there was allegedly a point of time when men came down from trees (p. 422). Regardless of the problem whether this is an undeniable fact or mere guesswork only, it establishes common ground for men and trees: it suggests that the two are relatives. Consequently, men are not supposed to live in their own world with many trees in it. But it's a world of trees where humans just arrived (p. 424). This seems to suggest that, because of their comparative ages, humans might be advised to respect the trees.

This idea is confirmed when the life expectancies of trees and humans are compared, for they are as different as they could be. On the one hand, individual men may be said to live for a limited period of time: on average, men's life expectancy may amount to 70 – 80 years; in some rare cases, they may even become almost 120 years old. On the other hand, trees easily outlive men as they frequently exist for 700-800 years (p. 214), so that forests are well-nigh imperishable. If they are cut down, they will grow and develop again without human interference of any kind. Trees and men, then, may thus be compared:

As to age, there is still a different aspect. Forests may be considered as enormous underground trees (p. 218): that is, like in the case of icebergs, the major part of them exists down in the water rather than above its surface. This idea is also reflected in the title of the German translation of The Overstory which runs Die Wurzeln des Lebens” (“The Roots of Life”). In the respect of their roots, trees are said to easily reach 9.000 – 10.000 years (p. 223).

Still the description of trees in the The Overstory is far from being complete. On the one hand, trees are said to form the richest collections of biomass (p. 283). On the other hand, trees are occasionally even poetically elevated if not idealized: “I sometimes wonder whether a tree's real task on earth isn't to bulk itself in preparation to lying dead on the forest floor for a long time” (p. 282). The implied answer by the writer will probably be in the affirmative since the dead trees become a kind of infinite hotel (p. 282) for many other species. What is even more, the trunks are ascribed moral qualities: they are said to commit a kind of self-sacrifice in order to give life to countless other species (p. 217). Patricia Westerford, who in the novel under consideration functions as the most committed activist, expresses her love of trees thus: “These slow, deliberate creatures [ … ] breeding birds, sinking carbon, purifying water, filtering poisons from the ground, stabilizing the micro-climate. Join enough living things together, through the air and underground, and you wind up with something that has intention” (p. 283f). Elsewhere Powers states that “a tree is a wondrous thing that shelters, feeds, and protects all living things” (p. 222). This once again emphasizes the manifold utility, if not the superiority of trees over mankind: “People aren't the apex species they think they are” (p. 285). Therefore “it could be the eternal project of mankind, to learn what forests have figured out” (p. 285). (As to other characteristic features of trees cf. p. 117f, p. 283f and p. 293.)

It does not come as a surprise that other plants are described in a similar way: Trees are praised for their moral and social behavior. Plants are said to protect one another from pests and stress (p. 454). In addition, “plants communicate and remember. They taste, smell, touch, and even hear and see. We, the species that figured this out, have learned so much about who we share the world with. We've begun to understand the profound ties between trees and people. But our separation has grown faster than our connection” (p. 451).

It seems that man and Nature have to change roles: the former 'masters' now have to take over the role of the students. Men are no longer allowed to extend their wills over things, to make them theirs, to manipulate them and to keep them at a psychic distance (p. 251). Instead, trees are said to possess intellectual property, and therefore they should get human rights (p. 247). This demand is transferred to Nature in general: “Trees, eagles, rivers, living mountains should be able to sue humans for theft and endless damages” (p. 250), which implies that in the past men acted like criminals who abused Nature. From this state of affairs, it should also be concluded that trees and other natural beings at least have as many rights as men. To put the problem differently: Equal rights should be given to everything alive (p. 252).

In the writer's imagination, there existed also profound ties between trees and people (p. 451). Yet trees should not be put above people (p. 339). Trees, however, are the specific examples from which many general transfers to Nature could be made. Trees are neither dependent on other creatures nor on human beings; rather than that, they are completely independent. Ultimately, Nature can exist without man since trees can achieve their self-preservation without any help from outside. In this respect, trees act more effectively than human beings. As Callenbach points out, trees are full of life, of communication and collaboration (p. 323). Trees are only dependent on other specimen of their own kind whereas Man clearly cannot exist without Nature.

It should be kept in mind that a poet or novelist cannot offer a one-to-one correspondence of reality, so there are always fictitious elements in the texts. However, the different novels discussed share the standpoint that – with the possible exception of Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy - all problems described here are rooted in overpopulation. In the course of time, it has turned out to be impossible to abolish hunger all over the world (29). In a similar way, for the different writers to present their views, there is only one possibility left, namely to have the number of human beings reduced decisively. This is done either by a traditional war of secession, after which in Ecotopia there is a population clearly diminished. Or as in David Mitchell's novel, there occurs genocide in order to decimate the human beings down to an insignificant number of 20.000 people. Or as in The Handmaid's Tale, after a right-wing overthrow of the traditional government, politicians have to fight very hard to achieve more births than deaths, and it is in The Maddaddam Story only that an individual madman's behavior is responsible for the fact that the human beings surviving consist of a handful of people only. Sometimes there are also references to atomic warfare and its consequences such as radioactivity (30). Thus in fiction there are most drastic or near-catastrophic solutions: men are again and again said to be affected by an approaching apocalypse.

Conclusion

Such a concept should become more popular to large crowds of people as well as more influential in order to be of general benefit to mankind. There should arise a community feeling among the different generations and a feeling of solidarity among the different nations and continents as well as among democratic and autocratic countries. All these should show enough commitment and act as a coalition of sensible people who have got the majority of votes all over our planet. We should be aware that all of us live in a very valuable natural world consisting of plants, animals, rivers, places and ourselves which are melted together and which all, some way or other, belong to each other. Consequently, we should be aware of what we may possibly abandon.

Moreover, we have to ask ourselves, how such objectives may be accomplished in political respect. Perhaps there will occur more international climate conferences (like those in Paris 2015 or the last one in Egypt 2022), after which there always has to exist sufficient respect for the decisions taken as well as a strong political determination to realize them. There could also be votes by different countries and nations in the UN General Assembly, which could become influential and form a worldwide movement. Or people may show more attention to the annual publications of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ("Weltklimarat"), which may also get more relevance by the far-spread social media whose messages circle the globe with an incredible velocity. If shared by a majority of people or even by the whole of mankind, their collective commitment may ideally function as a tool in order to eventually fight successfully against what may be called a process of progressive destruction of our world and what would be likely to end in the final climate catastrophe. If men are unwilling to follow reason in this situation, they will perhaps yield to the more powerful emotional appeal of the imagination which may be produced by literary works. Or they will perhaps become unified in pervasive anxiety of the impending apocalyptic disaster, that is, they may be intimidated by the threat of global annihilation.

To overcome this ultimate threat to humanity, would cost many men a tremendous effort. To begin with, the common welfare of the global community should become more momentous than self-interest and individual profit, power, prestige or privileges. Will men strive to escape an end-of-the-world-like fate, and will there still be sufficient time for a change? Perhaps this idea is futile or even absurd since it requires a change of mind, a new mentality and a favorable attitude towards human existence as such. However, it is crystal clear that the present climate crisis calls for a very urgent solution, to say nothing about the great extinction of countless species on earth (cf. p. 374). Probably it would also be naive to believe in the salvation of the world by literature, yet it transports enormous potentialities for affecting and influencing people. Thus such an attitude could possibly lead to a better understanding by increasing people's critical awareness and to contribute to a more appropriate evaluation of the climate crisis. What remains up to now is some hope, and that is the ultimate thing that man will cling to: as long as there is hope, man will go on existing rather than perish.

All over the text in Powers's novel The Overstory, there are several climate activists whose commitment to Nature is not very successful (p. 431). What is left of their efforts, however, is that they do not give up. Their ultimate message to the world is: “STILL” (p. 502). This attitude is embodied by one of the major characters (namely Olivia Vandergriff) who is convinced of the fact that working for the environment is the most wonderful thing in the world (p. 170 and p. 171), or, otherwise put, “the most wondrous products of four billion years of life need help” (p. 165, p. 264, p. 345, p. 348; cf. p. 493). As this principle is emphasized in the novel several times, it may be regarded as the creed of all the activists and as the central message of the novel. If this could become reality, it would be a valuable contribution to sustainability.

Notes

(2) Mark Lynas, Sechs Grad mehr. Die verheerenden Folgen der Erderwärmung (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2021), p. 110.

(3) Ray Kurzweil, Homo sa@piens. Leben im 21. Jahrhundert. Was bleibt vom Menschen? (Econ Taschenbuch Verlag 2000), p. 351.

(4) Cf. "https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth"

(5) Cf. Wikipedia, s.v. Thomas Robert Malthus: Essay on the Principle of Population (1798).

(6) Brave New World (Stuttgart: Klett, 2007), p. 49 and p. 53.

(7) Brave New World Revisited (1958) (London: Chatto & Windus, 1966), p. 21.

(8) There are hardly any substantial differences between the two versions; cf. Willi Real, "Aldous Huxley's Ecological Ideas in Ape and Essence"

(9) Ape and Essence (London: Vintage Classic, 2005), p. 129.

(10) As to the problems of erosion and parasitism in agriculture for example see again Aldous Huxley, Ape and Essence: “Everywhere erosion, […], the passage from hunger to imported food, from imported food to booming population and from booming population to hunger again.” (p. 92) Obviously Huxley is afraid of a vicious circle to be caused by the sheer power of numbers which will mean starvation for many people.
“The distinguishing mark of parasitism … is that one organism lives at the expense of another. In the end this one-sided relationship proves fatal to both parties; for the death of the host cannot but result in the death of the parasite by which it has been killed”. (p. 129) This aggressive passage accounts for the fact that the relationship between modern man and Nature has become most devastating for our planet.

(11) This view is put forward by Stefan Rahmstorf in an issue of Klimareporter (17-9-2022) Wie wir uns die Klimazukunft besser vorstellen können

(12) Of course, there exist many more utopian novels, such as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cat's Cradle (1963) and Maggie Gee, The Ice People (1998) or Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministery of the Future (2020). Yet for convenience's sake, my focus will lie on the six examples mentioned. For a comprehensive list of utopian novels which posses didactic relevance ("Knapptexte6") cf. "Utopische Romane" . In the following, page references to these novels will be given in (...)

(13) Ursula K. Heise, "David Brin's Earth (1990) – Epic Cli-Fi”, in: Axel Goodbody and Adeline Johns-Putra (eds.), CLI-FI (Berlin: Lang, 2019), p. 196. Cf. David Brin, Earth (New York: Bantam Books: New York, 1990), p. 269.

(14) David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks (London: Sceptre, 2014), p. 491.

(15) The Handmaid's Tale (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1985), p. 322f.

(16) Margaret Atwood, The Maddaddam Trilogy (London: Virago Press, 2013). Cf. also Dana Phillips, “Margaret Atwood's Maddaddam Trilogy (2003-2013) – Post-Apocalyptic Cli-Fi”, in: Axel Goodbody and Adeline Johns-Putra (eds.), CLI-FI (Berlin: Lang, 2019), p. 51.

(17) "Ernest Callenbach, Ecotopia (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1975).

(18) Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time (New York: Fawcett Books, 1976).
Marge Piercy, He, She and It (New York: Fawcett Books, 1992).

(19) Albert Arnold (“Al”) Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, first published in 2006. Deutsche Fassung: Eine unbequeme Wahrheit. Aus dem Englischen von Richard Barth und Thomas Pfeiffer (München, Riemann, 6. Auflage, 2006), p. 216. Cf. also David Brin, who, in a very impressive way, illustrates the explosion of the world's population growth; cf. his novel Earth, pp. 529-531.

(20) Cf. David Brin, who in his novel speaks of “using up resources at a furious rate”, (New York: Bantam Books, 1990), p. 68. Cf. also Richard Powers, The Overstory (New York/London: Norton: 2019), p. 321, who, in the context of the ecological footprint, speaks of “using resources faster than than the world can replace them.” As to the basic definition of this concept, cf. Wikipedia, s.v. ecological footprint.

(21) Cf. Erik M. Conways/Naomi Oreskes, The Collapse of Western Civilization (New York: Columbia Press, 2014), pp. 47-49.

(22) Luisa Neubauer/Alexander Repenning, Vom Ende der Klimakrise (Stuttgart: 2019), p. 118, p. 223 and p. 252. This metaphor occurs also in The Overstory, p. 321.

(23) Cf. Wikipedia, s.v. Dominium terrae. Cf. Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker and Anders Wijkman, together with 33 other members of the Club of Rome: Wir sind dran. Was wir ändern müssen, wenn wir bleiben wollen (Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2018), p. 124; cf. also Marge Piercy's statement that people want to be partners of the creation; Woman on the Edge of Time, p. 117.

(24) Cf. Amitav Ghosh, “A Vitalist Politics”, in: The Nutmeg's Curse (London: John Murray, 2021), pp. 235-244.

(25) For a general evaluation of the present situation, cf. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Klimareporter, (14-9-2022)

(26) Richard Powers, The Overstory (New York: W.W. Norton, 2018).

(27) In Powers's The Overstory, men and trees are said to have common ancestors, that is, they “share a quarter of genes” (p. 132; cf. p. 268), which implies that trees and men are relatives. Besides, it is a belief shared by many indigenous peoples on different continents, such as Latin America, Africa and Asia; cf. Amitav Ghosh, pp. 235-244. On the one hand, it seems to be true that people were formerly living on trees (p. 202). On the other hand, activists in our time sometimes choose to become the “tree people” as a form of protest.

(28) Powers, p. 485.

(29) There are still many factors which makes many people suffer from hunger: among them are the consequences of the climate crisis like increasing weather extremes, or wars and civil wars all over the world, etc.

(30) In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, water pollution is caused by nuclear accidents, and, as a result of these, there is a lot of sterility so that the handmaids are held like former slaves for “breeding purposes” (p. 176); and Marge Piercy, He, She and It (New York: Fawcett Books, 1991), p. 116: Leftover radioactivity from power plant residues is said to have left “most persons infertile”.

(31) Cf. Ghosh, p. 239f and p. 244.

(32) Cf. Ghosh, p. 248.